Reports circulated recently saying that a “special skills” military draft — aimed at people with computer and language skills — was on the table. It was just one of several options being considered by the Selective Service, the federal agency charged with managing a draft if it’s reinstated.
Selective Service administrators were quick to point out that there was “nothing new” in the proposal and that the president and Congress have yet to direct it to begin ramping up.
Forced conscription, which ended in 1973 in favor of an all-volunteer military, likely would be unpopular, but the reality is that the Bush administration’s military goals cannot be met without a draft. Currently 21 of the U.S. Army’s 33 regular combat brigades are on active duty in the “hot” zones of Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans. That’s 63 percent of the Army’s fighting
force. . . and then there are the additional troops stationed in Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and elsewhere around the globe.
This is a huge overextension. History has proved that a long-term military operation can only be sustained if you have twice as many soldiers waiting in the pipeline as you have stationed out in the field. By that rule of thumb, the regular military is now 125,000 soldiers short — a gap the Bush administration has temporarily plugged by calling more than 150,000 Army Reserve and National Guard troops to active service.
Of the 135,000 troops stationed in Iraq, just under half are guardsmen and reservists. But in an attempt to maintain that number, another 22,000 have already been sent there and brought home dead, wounded or medically unfit for service. Since the invasion of Iraq there have been more military casualties than in all the years since the end of the Vietnam War combined.
The human well is drying up. Enlistment rates in the regular armed forces and the National Guard have dropped precipitously, and, according to a poll conducted by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, a whopping 49 percent of soldiers stationed in Iraq say they don’t intend to re-enlist — even with the Army offering a $10,000 bonus.
In January 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney gave a speech in San Francisco outlining a further expansion of the military. In no uncertain terms he announced that our armed forces would be set up in more overseas bases so that the United States can wage war quickly around the globe. “One of the legacies of this administration,” he said, “will be some of the most sweeping changes in our military, and our national security strategy as it relates to the military and force structure, and how we’re based, and how we used it in the last 50 or 60 years, probably since World War II. I think the changes are that dramatic.”
Despite statements to the contrary, quiet preparations for the return of the draft have been under way for some time. The Selective Service System’s “Annual Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2004” — despite a ton of obfuscatory jargon, acronyms and bureaucrat-speak — can’t quite manage to bury all of its bombshells.
Strategic Objective 1.2 of the 2004 plan commits the Selective Service System to being fully operational within 75 days of “an authorized return to conscription.” Strategic Objective 1.3 then commits Selective Service to “be operationally ready to furnish untrained manpower within DOD [Department of Defense] timelines.” By next year, the government intends to have turned the ignition key on a mobilization infrastructure of 56 state headquarters, 442 area offices and 1,980 local boards. A big chunk of funding has been set aside this year to run what’s called an “Area Office Prototype Exercise,” which will “test the activation process from Selective Service Lottery input to the issuance of First Armed Forces Examination Orders.”
Strategic Objective 2.2 is all about bumping up the Selective Service System’s High School Registrar Program. What’s that? It’s a plan to put volunteer registrars in at least 85 percent of the nation’s high schools, up from 65 percent in 1998. Consider these Selective Service’s “troops on the ground,” making sure that the smallest possible number of eligible draftees manages to slip through the net. (In the school arena, by the way, the Bush administration has already pulled a fast one. Buried deep in the 670 pages of the No Child Left Behind Act is a provision requiring public high schools to give military recruiters access to facilities, as well as contact information for every student — or face a cutoff of federal aid.)
The 2004 plan commits Selective Service to report to the president on March 31, 2005, that the system is ready for activation with 75 days. If the agency manages the task, the first lottery could take place as early as June 15, 2005.
The job of approving a draft officially belongs to both the president and Congress, working together to pass new legislation, and officially it can only happen if the country is at war. But given the examples of the last three years, these safeguards are hard to call firm and reassuring.
First, as far as the Bush administration is concerned, we are at war in every respect. On the basis of this position, the president has skated around the strict language of the Constitution and launched the invasion of two different countries, despite the fact that only Congress is supposed to have the power to declare war. Second, the White House is supported by Republican majorities in both houses of Congress and in the Supreme Court. Although it is likely that any presidential decision to reactivate the draft would be hotly debated in Congress and resisted by a majority of the public, it is by no means clear that it could be effectively blocked — especially with prominent Democrats such as U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, both of New York, on record as supporting the possibility of some kind of conscription.
Of course, Selective Service doesn’t call it a “draft.” In the agency’s lexicon
of acronyms it’s a “Registrant Integrated Processing System”: RIPS, for short.
The acronym’s horrible irony — “rest in peace,” anyone? — seems to have been
lost on the bureaucrats.
This article appears in Apr 8-14, 2004.
